Post-Partum Psychosis and Going Postal

This has been paperwork hell week...visa applications, updated homestudy, travel arrangements, gathering everyone's passports...all to be packaged up in a 24 hr guaranteed Xpresspost envelope to arrive in Ottawa on time to finalize our adoption arrangements. I guess when the post office lady said guaranteed, I should have asked "or what" but I was in my happy place and remember I am a blonde now. So I stuffed all these precious documents in the courier envelope, took the tracking receipt off and sent it into the great unknown.

For the next three days, I logged on looking for the tracking number and the response was "item not found". So I phoned Canada Post.

The first lady was very pleasant in a Betty White kind of way, said yes it is very strange that the tracking number hasn't been entered, but sometimes that happens, and don't worry dear it will show up eventually. Call us by noon if you don't hear anything.

I called at 1pm and the next lady attending my call sounded like she had only been working there for 8 minutes and didn't like hard questions. She said they would put a trace on it at 5pm if it had not yet arrived. When I asked her how long it usually takes to find lost mail, she said they usually find it some time after they start looking.

On the third call, I got mall cop turned postal worker. What was the weather like when I sent the package (sunny) what did the mail box look like (red). I explained that we had very important adoption documents in the courier envelope and if they were lost, we would not likely be able to fly to China as we had planned. He asked if we had flight insurance. Things were not looking good. Then I mentioned that the envelope included 5 passports, one of them American. There is an American Passport in the envelope he repeated. This is very serious then. I am going to make this a number one priority and red alert this. We have a 95% chance of finding this envelope for you. We will call you tomorrow.

I tried to get online to see if we could reapply for our passports in short order, but lost passports have to be reported and investigated by the police. My mall cop postal worker must have felt the FBI breathing down his neck.

I did not sleep all night. I thought of my wee girl sitting in her orphanage wondering why her parents no showed on adoption day. Of all the barriers to getting this adoption done, who would have thought Canada Post would be the final nail. I could not think of a single solution to this problem that did not involve a defence team and bail hearings.

So the next morning as we prepared for work, I said to my dear man, I don`t think I can fix this problem on my own. I really don`t know what to do. To which he responded: yeah its going to be awful, we`re not going to get to China when we`re supposed to be there and we`re going to lose a ton of money on flights. Now in his defence, I have always been the solution focused member of the team, while he has been an expert in defining the problem. He comes by it honestly because everybody loves a doctor who can figure out what their problem is. Its just on this particular morning, I needed a solution man. After a brief exchange of potty words, lots of tears and a non traditional application of my curling iron, he said: I didn`t expect that response and he took off to hide in the relative peace of the labour and delivery unit. Lil looked at me and said: Momma, where did you get your headache from? From the Post Office, I said. She nodded knowingly.
So I fired up the computer that has been a constant in my life for the last four years, and there on the Canada Post Website it said "FOUND" and out for delivery under my tracking number. Canada Post has called every day since, to let me know that they found our envelope with the American Passport. Take home message: if Canada Post loses your mail, tell them it contains an American Passport.

Does this craziness happen to other people or have I been assigned a demented guardian angel who likes to play chicken with my coronary arteries? Seriously, enough already.

49 Days to Go. Praise the Lord and Pass the Amunition.